On a unanimous vote, board members adopted a resolution that attaches a caveat to their request for a state loan.

The resolution asks state lawmakers to seek a loan but urges them to write their bill in a way that seeks a state trustee instead of a state administrator for Oakland.

The distinction is crucial, because under a trusteeship, the board can still vote, and often the superintendent stays at his job and collaborates with the fiscal trustee.

Administrators assume full academic and fiscal control of school districts and can fire the superintendent. School boards are reduced to an advisory body under administrators.

"There is widespread support throughout Oakland, from the hills to the flatlands, that Chaconas' academic reforms have been highly effective and they want him to stay, so I am going to support the resolution because my job is to represent the people," said school board President Greg Hodge.

But the school board's request may be just that -- a request only.

Under the state education code, school districts whose deficits swell to more than 200 percent of their required reserve funds, such as Oakland, are automatically assigned a state administrator.

"The law is pretty clear on that," said Erik Skinner, assistant secretary of fiscal policy in Gov. Gray Davis' education office. "You can write legislation to say anything you want, though."

State Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, who has already drafted a bill simply asking for the money, said he isn't going to change the language because the idea of bending the rules for Oakland is not getting a warm reception at the state level.

"What the Oakland board is doing is creating its own reality," Perata said. "You can't say on one hand that you mismanaged $100 million, yet you still want control of the place. It flunks the common sense test."

Oakland ran into trouble, according to auditors from the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, by not properly budgeting for enrollment drops, not cutting enough to offset a 24 percent teacher pay raise, and failing to budget for the increased costs of filling several hundred teacher vacancies.

The resolution sparked an emotional debate at the school board meeting Wednesday night, where several of the 10 members questioned the point of the resolution.

"You can put out any fancy language you want to, but it's the state's call, we're asking the state for the money, the state isn't asking us," said school board member Noel Gallo, who eventually joined the all others in voting for the resolution.

Dan Siegel, who successfully argued the 1991 landmark case for the Richmond schools that led to the state law requiring the governor to rescue sinking districts, offered that laws can be changed.

Harold Pendergrass, one of Mayor Jerry Brown's appointees to the school board, said it should follow the advice of the school district attorney, who drafted the resolution, and support it.

Others simply got frustrated.

"Even at the 11th hour, we don't have a consensus of how to move forward, and I don't think we have any credibility to ask for local control along with a loan," Hodge said.

"I've been on the board for six years, and I just feel like for too long I've been with a bunch of kindergartners, including myself. When we preach local control, are we asking the community to support education for kids, or are we asking them to support us?"